Kymlicka on Libertarianism: A Response

"This essay examines several sections in Will Kymlicka’s Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (2nd ed.) that are relevant to libertarianism, making and explaining the following criticisms. First, Kymlicka’s “preface” misconstrues political philosophy’s progress, purpose, and its relation to libertarianism. Second, in his “introduction,” his “project” mistakes libertarianism as “right-wing,” justice as compromise among “existing theories,” and equality as the “ultimate value.” Third, his “a note on method” in effect takes as axioms, beyond philosophical examination, various alleged desiderata and the necessary moral role of the state. Moreover, his “ultimate test” being “our considered convictions” amounts to a conservative and illogical justificationism at odds with radical and coherent critical rationalism. Finally, Kymlicka’s chapter on “libertarianism” mistakes it as, inherently and unavoidably, free-market, anti-consequentialist, deontological, and Nozickian, and requiring “a foundational moral premiss,” without objective content, unmaximizable, indistinguishable from license, equality-based, anti-anarchist, “self-defeating,” indefensibly “unfair,” impractically “philosophical,” and without influence. A different version of libertarianism easily withstands all Kymlicka’s antipathetic criticisms."